Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(37)

All afternoon Luke sat there, drinking boilermakers, smoking fat cigars, and cussing Sally for leaving. As soon as he’d downed one glass, he’d order another.

When it began to look as if Luke was going to topple off the stool, Alvin suggested he go home and see if maybe Sally hadn’t returned.

“You deaf?” Luke answered. “I done told you she went to Albuquerque.”

Alvin had seen a lot of drunks come and go, and the mean ones were the worst. You couldn’t argue with them; the best you could do was get them out the door and send them on their way.

“Maybe she changed her mind,” he said. “Got off at the next stop and came back home.”

“It ain’t likely,” Luke replied. “She’s spiteful through and through.”

Alvin tried a dozen different ploys to get him to leave, but Luke just sat there and continued to order boilermakers one after the other. Nearly two times Luke’s size, Alvin could have picked Luke up and set him out on the street and he came close to doing it several times, but mean drunks almost always find a way of retaliation. Luke was well known as a trouble-maker, and there was no way of knowing what he’d do. Alvin waited, hoping sooner or later Luke would pass out.

It never happened. Luke just went from being belligerent and mean to being remorseful. He plopped his head down on the bar and moaned so loudly Alvin had to turn the jukebox music to maximum just to drown out the noise of his sobbing.

It was after dark when Luke finally staggered out of the bar and climbed back into his truck.

~

Leaving Luella’s as late as she had, Delia underestimated the amount of time it would take for the five-mile walk home. Nighttime walking was slower, and there were places where the darkness tricked you into thinking the road turned one way or another. When that happened, she and Isaac would walk twenty or thirty yards then find themselves tangled in a briar patch and have to turn back.

She was already regretting her mistake when she heard a crack of thunder in the distance. Delia wasn’t afraid of getting wet, but ever since that trek home from Bessie’s house she’d been harboring a fear of lightning. If it could take down a huge long leaf pine, she could only imagine what it would do to a person.

“Let’s walk faster,” she told Isaac.

The rain started minutes later. A storm came roaring in and dumped three or four inches of water on the ground in less than thirty minutes. They were already sloshing through the mud when they heard the sound of a truck coming up behind them.

Delia turned, saw what she thought was Benjamin’s truck, and stepped into the road to wave him down. She was waving her right arm in the air when the headlights came at her.

“Mama!” Isaac screamed and moved to reach for her.





Tears and a veil of self-pity were already clouding Luke Garrett’s eyes when the downpour started. With the flood of rain washing across his windshield he could see no more than two or three feet in front of him, and to be truthful he wasn’t expecting someone to be standing in the middle of a road as lonely as Cross Corner.

He heard the first thump when the boy bounced off the side of his truck. The second thump came when a woman in a flowered dress came flying across the hood of his car. He skidded to a stop, stuck his head out the window, and looked back.

“Damn stupid niggers,” he grumbled. “They done busted up my headlight.”

He pushed down on the gas pedal and drove off.





The Search





Wednesday was a long day for Benjamin. He’d started early with cutting back a thicket of blackberry bushes threatening to take over Sadie Walter’s backyard. It had taken hours longer than he’d thought, so he was late getting to the Branson house.

Edwin Branson had no tolerance for tardiness, especially from coloreds who were hired to do a job.

“Least you could do is show up on time,” he told Benjamin. Then he claimed he was in the middle of dinner, and Benjamin would have to wait at the back door while he finished eating.

“I can’t see any reason to let my meal grow cold because of your tardiness,” he said.

Standing in the hot sun, Benjamin waited while Edwin Branson finished his dinner then sat back for a second cup of coffee and a bowl of peaches. Nearly an hour passed before he stepped out onto the back porch and showed Benjamin the two pine trees at the far end of his yard that were to be taken down and chopped into firewood.

“Be sure to dig up them stumps and get rid of them,” he said.

It was well into the supper hour when Benjamin finished the job, and he still had Claudia Monroe’s roof to repair. He was replacing a row of loose shingles when he heard the distant sound of thunder. Claudia also heard the thunder. She stepped outside and called up to Benjamin.

“When you finish that be sure to check inside the attic, because when that storm hits I don’t want rain leaking in.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered.

Once the last shingle was nailed into place, Benjamin climbed down from the roof and crawled into the cramped attic. The heat of the day was still trapped in the narrow space and he had barely enough room to move around, pull loose the rotted board that was there, and nail a new one into place. By the time he finished, the rain was coming down in torrents.

“Benjamin,” Claudia said, “it’s way past suppertime. Do you want me to fix you a sandwich before you start home?”